A typical data communication apparatus that exchanges data traffic with network elements has working ports normally used to handle the data traffic and protection ports to which the data traffic can be switched if one or more of the working ports fail. Protection switching is handled by a traffic protection arbiter which receives a protection switch request, evaluates its priority, determines if protection may proceed based on network and local conditions, negotiates protection switching with the affected network elements and coordinates the movement of data traffic.
However, if more than one of the working ports fail simultaneously, the protection arbiter must address all the failures sequentially. This delays a protection switching response, which is undesirable.
Against this background, there exists a need to provide novel methods and devices to provide faster protection switching.